January 1983 was a historic month for monster waves in Southern California. My close, very talented friend Bobby Doran (IG: @bobbydoranart) and I were in the thick of it with our newish state-of-the-art yellow topped, slick black bottomed, Morey Boogie Mach 7-7 bodyboards. The pejorative term the surfers used for these was “sponge,” but what the surfers didn’t appreciate was that we could get deeper inside a barrel and get more quality time in the green room that they ever could imagine on their fiberglass surfboards, granted that the bodyboards were not as fast. The animosity between bodyboarders and surfers is legendary, but that is a story for another time.
Our usual breaks were at Leo Carrillo (Primo’s), Point Zero (“Zeroes”), Staircase, and Drainpipes. Drainpipes is located at Free Zuma on Westward Beach Road in Malibu, just northwest of Point Dume’, and it was one of our favorite, most frequented breaks. Also, the parking was free (hence the name, “Free Zuma”), which was great for young broke dudes like us. Drainpipes was a fast, hollow shorebreak that broke both left and right due to the contours created by the huge boulders that were scattered around the sandy bottom. It was also notorious for riptides, but we knew the break and the beach well enough to avoid them. We were living the classic SoCal weekend warrior beach bum life.
When we heard that Drainpipes was pumping at 20-feet, we knew we had to go. Neither of us had been on such a big, heavy wave, and this was our chance to get a North Shore experience in SoCal, albeit without the warm water, reef sharks, sharp coral, and cute island surfer girls. The biggest waves we had surfed previously were double overhead, or about 12-feet.
Being that it was still winter, the water was super cold (mid 50-degrees) so we brought our thickest O’Neill full wetsuits to fight off the chill. We knew it was going to be a short session by default due to the cold water and drizzly, thick overcast weather, but a short session is better than no session.
At Drainpipes, you don’t usually see the waves breaking from Westward Beach Road as you’re driving in from PCH due to the downward slope of the sandy beach, but on that Saturday morning, we saw these glassy walls of water lining up and peeling off. We looked at each other with our jaws agape without saying a word. We pulled up to the beach and there were only a couple of dozen or so people hanging around, mostly watching the three or four surfers that were already in the lineup at the outside break. We got out of my beater, primer gray ’69 Chevelle Super Sport and took cover under one of the lifeguard towers to watch. The waves were absolutely massive, and the ground shook with the pounding of the breakers. The surfers were pretty good as we watched them carve it up. We assumed that they were either loco Malibu locals or maybe some pros.
We were also counting the wave sets and their timing to get an idea of when and where we could paddle out. After about 15-minutes we knew what to do and went back to the car to get suited up. The gawking onlookers couldn’t believe that we were going out into such big waves with our sponges and Viper and Duck Feet fins. We were the only guys on bodyboards. It was a battle to get out, even on the smaller sets. The whitewater itself was 15-feet high. After what seemed like an eternity (but in reality, was maybe all of 10-minutes) we were outside the break and could rest for a few minutes. The thing about gigantic waves like these is that the incoming swell itself moves you up and down so much that it sometimes feels like you’re on a roller coaster.
After a few minutes of rest, we paddled into the lineup. Bobby was to my right, and he found himself in a perfect spot to drop into a right breaking wave and I watched him slide down the face, carve hard right, and disappear behind a thick wall of water. I watched the back of the wave for the telltale signs of closing out, but it kept on peeling, and by the time Bobby flew up and over the back of the wave ten feet above the water, he was about a hundred feet away from me. The smile on his face, and the fist pump, and the loud, extended WOO-HOO were all I needed for some additional motivation.
My first wave was a left, and the exhilaration of sliding down so fast on such a steep face for so long will never be forgotten! I pulled a hard left bottom turn, trimmed up my bodyboard about mid face and carved sharp top and bottom turns a few times inside this incredibly massive, almost perfectly round, hollow wave. On a bodyboard, you are much lower and closer to the water than you are on a surfboard which provides a very different wave experience, and to me, it’s a deeper connection. I could hear the wave closing out behind me and felt the rush of air, so I accelerated across the face and digging hard with my left rail and shoulder, went vertical and punched through the lip for a nice airborne landing on the back of the wave where I slid down for a little bit – it was like getting a little bonus wave at the end!
Bobby and I caught several more individual waves and also a couple of “Party Waves” where we both dropped into the same wave and exchanged top and bottom turns as we crisscrossed each other – our wake looking like a DNA double-helix.
Then Bobby started to show off a little bit, so, naturally, I had to show off a little bit too…but then I got cocky, as young twenty-somethings do with their boundless hubris. I decided to go for a late drop-in and paid the price for it: I got pitched out over the falls, dropped headfirst at least 20-feet in midair, got pounded to the bottom, which knocked some of the air out of me, and then got sucked up the back of the wave and ended up inside the most extreme rinse cycle that I ever experienced – I was basically a spinning human-sized starfish. I could not sense which way was up. My leash wrapped around my neck, and for a brief moment, I thought I was going to drown – this was not your typical hold-down! But then I pulled myself together, detangled my leash and reeled in my bodyboard with it, grabbed the rails of the board with all of my strength, and popped up above the churning foam gasping (choking, really) for air.
But now I was caught on the inside of the break, which is the worst place you can find yourself in big surf. At this point, you only have two choices: Paddle back out, or ride the churning foam in. Make that three choices; the third of which is to die! I decided that I had to get at least one more wave, so I did the paddle-battle to get back out into the lineup. In the meantime, I spotted Bobby tearing it up, which made me both happy and slightly jealous.
When I got back into the lineup, I was cold and exhausted and had to take a break to catch my breath. By the time I caught my last wave of the day, my feet were numb, I was shivering, and my teeth were chattering. That’s when I found myself in the perfect take-off zone and dropped into the most glorious wave of my life. It was a perfect, glassy, seemingly endless left. I tore it up until it started closing out behind me. I turned hard right and let the fast, foamy whitewater push me back to the sandy beach where I was stranded momentarily like a beached whale. I jumped up with still numb feet, which was not a pleasant experience with the pins and needles sensation shooting through them, and struggled to walk up the steep sandy shore with the heavy pull of the retreating water from the massive waves trying to yank me back in. I fell forward a few times in my battle to break free. It was as if the ocean didn’t want me to leave.
I tossed my board down on the sand and plopped my totally spent ass on it, and as the saltwater, sand, seaweed, and maybe a very small sand crab or two drained out from my nose and ears, I watched Bobby take his last wave of the day and shred. He was so good; I truly think he could have gone pro.
As we were walking back to the car looking like a couple of wet stray cats, one of the onlooking surfers asked, “You guys were pretty good out there; are you pros?” Bobby and I looked at each other and smiled. I replied, “No, man, we’re just a couple of rank amateurs; can’t you tell by the holes in our wetsuits?” as I pointed to a hole in the knee of my wetsuit. We all laughed. Someone passed a joint to us. We inhaled deeply.
My old car did not have a working heater, so Bobby and I, exhausted, shivering, and half frozen, drove back to the Doranch in the Valley (another story for another day), listening to KROQ as we drove along Kanan Road toward the 101. We amused each other with the retelling of our epic wave session and what the experience was like on such a terrifying yet magnificent wave. We planned a surfing safari for the summer where we would hit all of the famous SoCal breaks all the way from Malibu to the Mexican border, and maybe plan a trip to the North Shore of Oahu. It was a good day to be out in the water.
BANG-BANG-BANG! – down came the gavel with an overly enthusiastic force during the last legislative session of the year. “H. R. 11,776 2050, the TAIL (Taxing Animal’s Innate Look) Tax has passed with a supermajority vote; this session is adjourned.” And just like that, another expensive, intrusive new tax was imposed upon the people virtually out of thin air, and the formerly considered untouchable direct taxation upon people’s pets was quickly – even eagerly – signed into law by the president. These legislators have zero restraint and are perpetually scheming for new taxes needed to continue funding the ever-expanding Government Industrial Complex, which, by 2050, knows no boundaries. And so, the giant sucking maw of government greed, power, and corruption continued unabated.
As the dissenting nay voters stormed out of the chamber, the minority leader by the name of O’Keefe verbally warned his colleagues, “The citizens of this country will not tolerate this egregious, pernicious, and arbitrary tax on their beloved pets. We should be voting to repeal taxes like this instead of creating new ones! This TAIL tax will be the final straw, and the people will not tolerate it – mark my words!”
The TAIL tax law went into effect on January 1, 2051, and was retroactive for the 2050 tax year.
Unfortunately, this new TAIL tax did not really surprise anyone, after all, by 2049 everything else had already been levied a tax. People were now paying taxes on everything consumable (the list of which is too long and tedious to put down here, but believe me when I say everything), plus other ridiculous taxes like a personal carbon footprint tax as assessed by how much CO2 gas a person emits while breathing, how much rainwater and sunlight falls on their property, how many miles they drive, a per square toilet paper tax (that always spikes during cold and flu season), a keyboard keystroke tax (which always spikes during a breaking news story), a per-email tax, social media account taxes, a bodyweight tax (which is always up and down), a carbohydrate tax, condom tax, per brick tax, phone minute use tax, ice cube tax, firewood tax, a plant and garden tax, grass clipping tax, yard trimming tax, a per tooth tax (rumored to have triggered a massive spike in tooth extractions), fingernail and toenail trimmings taxes, earwax tax, haircut tax, dog poop tax, cat poop tax, human poop tax, toilet tax, fork, spoon, and knife taxes, a sleep tax, a snore tax, flatulence tax (which always spikes on Cinco de Mayo), a per-page book tax, a sporting goods tax, a facial hair tax (both men and women – because equality!) the full list of absurd taxes just goes on and on – let your imagination run wild and you’ll be right! The tax rate was already approaching 80% and rising, mostly to pay for the ever-expanding $100 trillion-dollar federal debt.
In essence, the politicians were perpetually scheming and engaging in financially punishing people simply for being human in order to fund the out-of-control government spending. Absolutely nothing was sacred anymore (not that anything ever actually was sacred to begin with, in the literal term anyway). The government even forced people to install cameras and toilet seat sensors and all manner of environmental sensors in and around their homes and yards and in their cars and trucks to track all of this stuff, all at the taxpayers’ expense, of course.
Naturally, many of the tax revenue estimates made by the bureaucracy in Washington DC were entirely wrong, hence the ongoing assault on the taxpayer for more and more of their money, after all, someone has to pay for all of the “free” stuff doled out by the government. Sadly, the people were complicit; they had capitulated because they would rather stay out of a dark, dank federal prison and enjoy what little liberty and freedom and money that they had left on the outside than to rebel against it and end up on the inside of one. All of the politicians knew this, and they used it to their maximum advantage.
Filing the tax returns for all of these new taxes not only costs far more money, it takes four times as much time – proving once again that the government doesn’t care about using up your time as they see fit – but also the punitive punishment administered by the government for getting it wrong will directly result in the seizing of all assets plus jail time, so people are always in fear of an audit. Nowadays, there are more heart attacks during tax season than there are during daylight savings time changes in the spring and the fall, the previous recordholders. “Death by a thousand taxes,” was no longer just a metaphor.
When Mark Armstrong heard the news about this new TAIL tax, he dropped his cup of coffee onto the floor, which made all of his half-dozen or so rescue dogs and cats temporarily scatter from the kitchen where he was standing. As Mark was cleaning up the mess, his pets slowly started returning to the kitchen to see what was going on, and his favorite Pomeranian, Zea, started licking up the whiskey-tinged coffee from the floor. “Don’t’ worry guys,” Mark said to his beloved pets, “I’ll figure out a way to come up with the extra TAIL Tax money.”
Then he stood up and looked out of the kitchen window across the expanse of his hilly, tree studded, hundred-acre property located somewhere east of Podunk where he had other rescue dogs and cats housed in his barn and outbuildings all living very comfortable lives. There were about twenty-five dogs and cats in all. This new TAIL Tax was going to cost him thousands of extra dollars per year – money that he simply didn’t have – which would ultimately bankrupt him. Unfortunately, Mark was a retiree on a pension that he was barely scraping by on, and any new expense – especially involuntary ones imposed by the government – were an absolute threat to his livelihood. He bristled at the thought of another new, unfair, idiotic tax.
Mark also felt deeply in his heart that the government had gone too far this time, and he simply was not going to take it sitting down – he was not going to go along with this death by ten-thousand taxes madness imposed upon the people by the faceless, heartless, mindless bureaucrats in DC. In fact, an intense feeling of rebellion began to swell up in him; one that he could not suppress – he determined at that moment that the time for a tax war had come. But before engaging in a battle with the federal government Leviathan, he wisely decided to check into the language of the new law so that he could better develop some rules for engagement.
Notably, “A $50 per inch annual TAIL tax will be assessed on any cat or dog living within the household, the length of which shall be measured from the anus to the tip of the tail, including the fur, rounding up to the next one-quarter of an inch. All farm animals will be excluded.” He did some quick math in his head; this new TAIL tax was going to cost him approximately $30K per year, and there was no way he could pay it. Then he had a dark thought cross his mind that maybe this law was not really about a new tax, rather, it was a law designed to allow for more civil asset forfeitures because people won’t be able to pay their tax bills, giving the government more ownership and control over private property. This thought sent a chill down his spine, and he was not going to give up his ranch without a fight, even if it killed him.
From reading the entire text of the new law, Mark ascertained the following items which he could use in his TAIL Tax war:
The government was clearly attempting to also get a headcount of the dogs and cats that were living amongst the population, most likely for another tax scheme. Mark reasoned to himself, “And this is why I never fill out the census: The government will use the information provided against me.”
The term(s) of “within the household,” were not clarified, so there was a gray area for an indoor/outdoor pet, like a cat, for example, and whether there was an exemption for a pet that spent more time outdoors than indoors.
Specific language for dogs and cats not living “within the household” was missing from the law entirely, either by design or possibly by mistake, leaving room for interpretation.
There was no language included in the text of the law preventing tail docking or caudectomy, vis-à-vis, removal of the tail, and although this would be an extreme tax avoidance measure, certainly, some people would do it.
There was also some darker text within the law that enraged Mark: “Any citizen that underreports the headcount of the pets living within the household will be fined $50,000 and sentenced to a mandatory minimum of 6–months in jail, and the pets intentionally excluded from the tax return will be taken into custody and a fine of $100 per day will be assessed. At 90-days, if the fine is not paid in full, the animal in question will be destroyed. Financing options are available.”
“Those greedy, immoral, power-hungry bastards! ‘Pay us, or the dog gets it?’ It is now painfully obvious that the government will never stop their assault on the taxpayers unless we force them to stop! Guys: We must be the tip of the spear!” Mark exclaimed to his audience of house pets.
Mark sent a letter to his congressman, eloquently explaining his financial situation and how the TAIL tax was going to bankrupt him. There was no reply.
Mark sent a letter to the President, eloquently explaining his financial situation and how the TAIL tax was going to force him to sell his property. There was no reply.
Mark emailed the local news station, eloquently explaining the financial implications and how the TAIL tax was going to bankrupt many people. There was no reply.
Fuming over being ignored by the politicians and the media and facing financial ruin, Mark decided to make a TikTok video using clips of his rescue animals and house pets and explaining the TAIL tax law and how it allowed for the government to seize and destroy peoples pets and levy heavy fines against them, and it must be stopped by any means. This, fortunately, got the people’s attention. On day 1, he got a hundred views. By day 3, there were 10,000 views. By the end of the week, the video had reached 1,000,000 views and followers. The word was getting out. Zea was the new darling of the Internet. The politicians were getting flooded with phone calls, letters, and emails demanding them to repeal the TAIL tax. They did not budge.
In one protest, a few dozen people dumped a truckload of fake animal tails in front of the White House while holding up a banner that said, “NO TAIL TAX!” The crude, ineloquent message hinted that the people would cut off their pets tails in rebellion to avoid the new tax. This only got national news coverage after the capitol police arrived in force in full riot gear and started bashing the heads of the peaceful protesters.
The TikTok video also got the unwanted attention of someone in power in DC who directed the IRS to audit the last 6-years of Mark’s tax returns and to scrutinize them, “Microscopically.” This was the sort of audit that everyone feared. The kind of audit that nobody could survive with the relentless requests for all manner of obscure receipts, bank records, cleared checks, savings and checking account activity, cryptocurrency accounts and activity, stock trading accounts and activity, non-profit donation receipts, gifts, inheritances, lottery winnings, medical expenses, home improvement expenses, ad infinitum. I was clear that Mark was being targeted by the government, and there was no doubt that they would surely find something. They always do.
Early one morning, just before dawn, the rescue dogs in the barn and outbuildings began barking fiercely, waking Mark up. He got out of bed, grabbed his 12-gauge pump shotgun, which, living on a ranch with bears in the vicinity, was per the usual, walked out into the living room, and peered out of the big front window. He did not notice anything unusual. On his way to the kitchen from the living room to make some coffee, he heard a strange buzzing sound coming from the outside of the house near the back door where the electrical panel was located. He thought there might be an electrical problem, so he opened the back door to go outside and check it out – and there he was met with a large, matte black drone hovering at eye-level, just beyond the wraparound porch, which not only startled him, but it also triggered a split-second defensive response that resulted in the immediate disassembly of said large, matte black drone via a 12-gauge 00 shotgun blast from the hip. After years of collecting and shooting firearms, Mark was an expert marksman and new a few trick shots.
Mark walked over to the wreckage to investigate. There, on what remained of the matte black carbon fiber fuselage that housed the NiCad batteries, hard drive, HD camera, and circuit boards, was the unmistakable logo of the FBI. He took a video clip of it with his phone. At that precise moment, Mark knew that it was going to be a very long day. With the phone video camera still rolling and the sun rising, he discharged a point-blank 00 shotgun blast into the heart of the electronics. Blown to smithereens was an understatement. He looked into his camera, shook his head, stopped the video, and went back inside the house to finish making his coffee and also to prepare for the imminent battle. He reviewed surveillance video from around the ranch and saw that there were a half-dozen black SUV’s plus an armored personnel vehicle at the front gate. “They must have found something really bad in my tax returns,” he said to Zea. He called a lawyer friend.
“Well, Mark, you certainly have them on failing to provide due process, but they are definitely not going to back down now. They will label you as an unpatriotic tax evader and claim that you started the hostilities, destroyed government property, falsified your tax returns, and they will find a way to escalate until you leave the house feet-first in a body bag. Remember what happed in Waco; your house may ‘accidentally’ catch on fire. Unfortunately, today may be your last one. I advise that you take to your TikTok followers and tell the story as it unfolds. I’ll call the media.”
The commanding FBI agent named Johnson who was watching the live HD video feed from the drone camera as it got blasted out of the sky was not amused. “Do you not understand what the meaning of ‘stealth’ is!” he snapped at the drone pilot, who quickly replied, “You saw what happened – that guy’s reflexes were unbelievable – I had zero time to respond!” “Well, now that the stealth surveillance tactic has been compromised, we’ll have to give Mr. Armstrong a courtesy call and allow him to surrender peacefully,” said Johnson to his colleagues.
Mark’s phone rang with “This is the FBI” displayed as the caller ID without a phone number. He started his live TikTok app and answered the phone in hands-free mode. “Hello FBI, this is Mark Armstrong, I’ve been expecting your call. Fair warning: you are being streamed live in front of a million plus TikTok followers.” There was an awkward moment of silence, and Mark thought that he heard a few muffled expletives before agent Johnson responded, in a calm voice, “Mr. Armstrong, it appears that we may have started off on the wrong foot this morning. You see, you’ve been indicted for tax evasion, and we have a federal warrant for your arrest, and we were simply using the drone to determine if it was safe to send up some agents to take you into custody. But now that you shot it down, not only have you committed another serious federal crime you have also escalated the situation with your hostility.” “Hostility? I’m no threat to anyone, Agent Johnson, and you could have just used the intercom button at the gate – I would have let you in. But now I am in fear for my life after seeing that drone spying on me.” “Mr. Armstrong, are you saying that you are not going to surrender to the FBI?” “Surrender to some trumped up charges brought on by some greedy, bloated, ham-fisted politicians in Washington because I informed the public about the ugly truth of the money grabbing TAIL tax? This is absolute tyranny and likely a death warrant based on the FBI’s infamous history of bungling these sorts of things. I’ll need to consider my options, Agent Johnson.” and with that, Mark hung up the phone. The TikTok live stream responses were blowing up.
Mark addressed his TikTok followers, “Friends; I really don’t want to die today, but the FBI is probably going to raid my house at some point and ‘accidentally’ kill me, so I’m going to leave this live stream on, and you can watch how the events unfold in real time.” He plugged his phone into the charger, set his phone on a stand, put the stand on a table, and aimed the camera with the front window and front door of the house in the field of view. That’s when the power went out. Mark got back in front of his phone and told his audience that the FBI had just cut his power, but he had several fully charged battery banks for his phone to keep the live stream going.
Although Mark was on high alert and flinching at every sound he heard outside of the house, the rest of the day was uneventful, perhaps indicating that the feds were planning for something after nightfall.
Sure enough, just after sunset, the dogs outside started barking again. Mark looked out of the front window to see a small tactical robot rolling up the driveway in the twilight. He grabbed his phone and showed his live stream audience what was happening – which had grown to over 3-million viewers – and said, “Looks like they sent up a robot TAIL tax collector! I don’t know what is going to happen next, but please pray for me and my pets!” And at that very moment, his phone displayed, “Lost Internet Connectivity.” Now the FBI was blocking his 5G signal. Mark found himself completely cut off from the grid. He sipped his cold, whiskey laden coffee in the dark.
As the dogs continued barking excitedly in the darkness, and as Mark continued to observe the tactical robot closing in on his front porch (he had already assumed that it had some sort of fatal explosive or incendiary payload, or other armament intended to kill him), suddenly, from the back of the house, there were headlights shining in through the back door window. Mark assumed that it was the FBI driving in with the armored personnel carrier, coming in from the old, mostly unused back gate that was overgrown with black walnut trees and was only accessible by an old unmapped dirt fire road that ran along the back of the property.
He picked up Zea, who was also barking, and went to the back door window to see what was happening, halfway expecting to take a bullet to the head. That’s when he saw the endless stream of cars and news vans and pickup trucks rolling in with huge American and Gadsden flags abundantly displayed. Then he heard the horns honking. Then he saw droves of people walking in with flashlights and their dogs. The cars and trucks and people began surrounding his house. Someone yelled out from a bullhorn, “MARK ARMSTRONG – YOUR CAVALRY IS HERE!”
In that moment, FBI Agent Johnson realized that he missed seeing the back gate of the property during his earlier recon using satellite images, and this error might cost him his job. He also couldn’t believe what he was witnessing through the HD camera on the tactical robot: The people surrounded it and started chanting, “USA-USA-USA!” while pumping their fists in the air. Johnson lamented to his team, “Dammit! We’re done, boys. Pack it up!” And with that order, the tactical robot operator began backing it down the driveway, slowly, all the while the growing crowd of people escorted it to the gate.
The lights on the property suddenly came back on. Mark’s phone rang with the same, “This is the FBI” caller ID with no phone number. “Armstrong; this is Agent Johnson. It appears that you have a lot of friends supporting you. We’re going to disengage and leave now, and best of luck to you.” Mark replied, “Agent Johnson, why don’t you come up to the house for a dram of whiskey, you know, as a peace offering?” “Thanks, Mark, but I’m on duty. Besides, I don’t like big, potentially hostile, anti-law enforcement crowds. By the way, I was on your side the entire time, but I have orders to follow.” And with that, Agent Johnson ended the call, and the convoy of FBI vehicles drove off into the inky black night.
It became known as the “Wag-the-Tax Revolution.” The media reports said that 5,000 people came to stand with Mark. The FBI said that it was only 500. There was a subsequent anti TAIL tax march on Washington where it was estimated that 5-million people showed up with their beloved, well behaved pets. Mark and Zea became folk heroes and made the usual media appearances. Mark wrote a bestselling book about it. Zea became a well-paid spokesdog for a national dogfood brand.
The pushback against the TAIL tax was so intense across the nation, that every single legislator who voted for it got voted out of office. Thousands of arcane tax laws and anti-liberty and anti-freedom laws were repealed. The size and scope and power and expense of the government was reduced to a point where nobody really noticed it anymore, as it should have been all along.
The people flourished with the additional freedom and liberty, and with the heavy tax burden lifted off of their backs, they had more money in their pockets to put to use for their own personal version of the pursuit of happiness.
We wake at dawn, often begrudgingly, and load up the bikes, and the necessary gear, and drive the road, barely awake, to the edge of land, to the edge of the sea, where the two collide, is where we congregate, to set out, on our weekly ritual.
We ride, we ride.
With skinny tires, and spoke and wheel, and chain and gears, we hop on our saddles, and grab our handlebars, and we ride the weathered, asphalt ribbon, that strings along the, Pacific Ocean, and crisscrosses, the coastal mountains, that are dotted with, century old oak trees, that are covered with lichen, and black walnut trees, with resident squirrels, and holes in the ground, with other resident squirrels, that often scurry, frantically, without apparent reason, out across the road, directly in front of us, making us flinch, and miraculously, with nowhere to hide, they somehow avoid getting run over, at the very last second.
We ride, we ride.
With hawks, crows, and condors, soaring overhead, and sometimes, a turkey buzzard or three, on the road ahead, dining a creature, that was formerly living, this is what they do, we also spy mule deer, and an occasional coyote, out in the periphery, of the living canvas, and we see, the tumbleweeds, waiting for the wind, to set them free, and we see the purple sage, and the green wild fennel, an invasive species, that is hard to eradicate, and the orange poppies, and the purple lupine, and the yellow coreopsis, the rainbow of colors, and the richness of textures, is pleasant to the eyes, as we roll by, side by side, and keenly observe.
We ride, we ride.
Looking out across, the shimmering azure sea, changing hues by the moment, we see the dark kelp beds, just beneath the surface, that protect the little fishes, from the big fishes, who want to eat them, and we see sailboats, and fishing boats, and we see whales, and dolphins, and sea lions, surfing and playing, in the briny blue, and they smile at us, and we smile back, acknowledging each other, in the fleeting moment, as we glide down the road.
We ride, we ride.
We ride in the fresh salt air, and in the warm sunshine, and in the biting cold, and in the pouring rain, and in the gusty wind, that nobody really likes, and we fix flat tires, regardless of weather conditions, because we must, and we talk and laugh, about all sorts of things, sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, but always engaging, and sometimes we cuss, to emphasize a point, and sometimes we deride, the ones that are deserving, of our scorn.
We ride, we ride.
We ride along, through the open space, between heaven and earth, past the verdant fields, and up and over the hills, and across the valleys, and through the mountain passes, and down the canyons, sometimes too fast, and through the tunnels, and over and under the bridges, and sometimes through water, that’s a little too deep, that gets your shoes and feet wet, making them cold and squishy, and year after year, we meet and we ride, for endless miles, with the people that we love.
We ride, we ride.
This is how we meditate, and naturally medicate, and how we heal, and how we make sense of, our complicated lives, until the fateful day comes, when circumstances conspire, to weaken and wither our bodies, and we can ride no more, then we’ll dream, the wonderful dream, the golden dream, the infinite dream, of the adventures past, and the stories told, and the laughter, and the comradery, where time stands perfectly still.
Recently, my old wireless keyboard had some stubborn, sticky keys, so I had to replace it. Mind you, the keys were not sticky with foodstuffs like strawberry jam, orange blossom honey, or gooey perfumy hand lotion like my mother-in-law’s keyboard (true story); they were sticky as in I had to mash them down to get them to work. This mashing of the keys has the potential to trigger carpal tunnel syndrome, so the keyboard had to go to the great computer in the sky. Farewell, my QWERTY friend.
Subsequently, I had to purchase a replacement keyboard and mouse set. The set came with what can best be described as a warning booklet in a 1-millimeter font which required a magnifying glass to read. There were battery warnings, laser warnings, FCC warnings, plus product use guidelines. You’d think that I just bought a nuclear detonating device, not a keyboard and mouse. The only thing missing, I think, was language about the keyboard not being intended to be used a weapon. This booklet seemed like hyper legal overkill to cover any potential product liability. All of this for a keyboard? I’m pretty sure that my dad’s old mechanical Smith-Corona typewriter had no such label. I’m also pretty sure that his generation would have torn any such label off anyway.
Naturally, now I’ve been noticing that there are warning labels on everything. EVERYTHING! It is as if we have collectively lost all common sense and are somehow no longer responsible or accountable for not knowing that a knife may be sharp, or that a fire is hot. This is beyond ridiculous – this is insanity.
Is it not common sense (or common knowledge, which, apparently, is not so anymore) that:
A stovetop may be hot.
A hot cup of coffee may be hotter.
An electric appliance may shock you.
An electric chainsaw may shock you and also cut you.
You might fall off of a ladder.
A lawnmower may be dangerous if you stick your hands or feet underneath the cutting blade shroud.
That sunscreen may not protect you from actually getting skin cancer.
An inflatable flamingo is not a life saving device and you may drown.
Gasoline is flammable.
Rat poison is poisonous.
You might crash your bicycle.
You might cut yourself with a pair of scissors.
If society is going to go through slapping warning labels on all of the allegedly dangerous things, may I also suggest warning labels for people? Simple labels like:
Does not get along well with others.
Do not allow to consume alcohol.
Volatile.
Agitated.
Bigot.
Democrat.
Republican.
Dangerous while driving.
Dangerous while talking.
Narrow-minded.
Intolerant.
Indifferent.
Hater.
Extremely selfish.
Hypocrite.
Liar.
Pathological liar (there is a difference).
Blowhard.
Unmotivated.
Manipulator.
I think this would help avoid a whole lot of conflicts because you simply would avoid these types of people, right? On second thought, it would leave you with the uncomfortable knowledge that there are so many of them running around possibly having children.
I would argue that warning labels are interfering with the natural order of things like Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, for example. Think about that for a minute. If we don’t allow Darwinism to do its natural selection thing, are we not allowing for the perpetuation of DNA that perhaps should have discontinued?
I don’t believe that we want the guy who shocked himself while trimming his tree by cutting into a utility wire with an electric chain saw and fell off his ladder into a gasoline fueled firepit to have any children. Prove me wrong.
But there is always a lawyer somewhere that would ask, “Was there a visible warning label on the utility wire?”
Politicians. They’re just built different. From what I can gather, their (he/him/his, she/her/hers) “job” consists of the following:
Convincing the people that they should be elected mostly because of some sort of affinity for something that the people care about (based on polling, of course): a strong military, American jobs, the economy, entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, etc.
Convincing the people that they need to be protected from some bogeyman du jour, often made up out of thin air, but generally some evil foreign entity.
Convincing the people that the opposing political party is to blame for everything bad that is happening while also engaging in bad things themselves.
Convincing the people that raising taxes (i.e., taking even more of your money) is a patriotic thing to do because it helps out our country, our sick, disabled, poor, and elderly in one form or another.
Convincing the people that they are getting the biggest slice of the tax dollar pie as possible (i.e., government handouts).
Being that most politicians started out as lawyers, they are highly skilled at this convincing business. Maybe there is some truthiness to some of this convincing, but the jury is still out regarding actual truth. In reality, much of it are noble lies.
What politicians avoid talking about is their cut, er, I mean the cost of running the government, whom, apparently by design, have made themselves the ultimate middlemen because nothing happens unless they get their cut first.
You work. The government takes some (too much, actually) of your money in the form of taxation. The government divvies up the tax money amongst the various departments. In the meantime, throughout this entire divvying process, they always get their cut, and they always take their cut.
Now I’m going to use some very simple math here to prove my point because I’m fairly good at simple math. I also like to use infographics to support a topic, so here we go…
I think this is how most people think the government works:
The tax dollars flow in and are distributed to the various programs. The various programs assure that the recipients get their money.
But this is how the government actually works:
You see, the tax dollars flow in and are distributed to the various departments who then distribute it to the various programs, with each level of government taking their cut along the way before the money finally gets to the recipient who, by the way, is not always a sick, disabled, poor, or elderly person as you have been led to believe. Recipients also include multi-million dollar incorporated farms and billion-dollar industries, like Big Ag, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the automotive industry, the aerospace industry, and various military industrial complex companies to name a few. I abhor this last point because I cannot stand the thought of my tax dollars going into the coffers and pockets of wealthy businessmen.
The politicians will tell you that those companies need the tax money to keep Americans working, stay competitive, and “create jobs,” as the popular political speech goes. This also happens to go directly against free-market principles and the government should not be meddling in this space – let the market (i.e., the people) figure out who the winners and losers should be – not the politicians receiving massive donations from these large corporations. But they do, and this meddling skews basic economics so much so that a rocket scientist can’t even figure out the math.
Many (too many, in my opinion) of your tax dollars get consumed by the black hole of bureaucracy itself and, to me, it appears to be an inverted Ponzi scheme. Or maybe an organized crime syndicate.
The actual percentage of the government cut are hard to track because the black hole of bureaucracy is also really good at obfuscating this kind of information, but it appears to be somewhere “estimated at about 5%,” according to the Cato Institute. I know what you’re thinking, “Shut the hell up, Snarky, it’s only 5%!” To which my reply is, 5% of the annual U.S. government budget of $6.75T (that’s trillion, with a “T”) is $337.5B, some of which, by the way, has to be borrowed because the government has a spending problem – oops – I meant to say because of budget deficits. Hmm, the last time I was in a budget deficit I ended up in bankruptcy court.
So, $337.5B divided by the 2025 U.S. population of 348M (rounding up) is $970 (rounding up again) for every man, woman, and child in this country. Okay, so I’ll just write out a $970 check for everyone in my household to the IRS and I’m done for the year, right? Not so fast, Snarky: this math is much, much too simple – you’ll need to use the official U.S. government math to get it right or you risk having your assets seized and going to prison. You see, you’ll have to apply the 6,871-page U.S. tax code (75,000 pages after the U.S. Treasury’s official interpretation of the tax code) to figure out who actually pays what, plus file your annual tax return. This is absolutely ridiculous and borders on insanity. This is all in an attempt to make sure that you pay your ever increasing “fair share” of taxes which never actually feels fair at all.
In the meantime, city, county, state, and federal politicians are all perpetually scheming on how to take even more of your money for more government jobs programs which will also cost more money in and of themselves. Stuff like increased or new sewer taxes, refuse taxes, energy taxes, toilet taxes, storm water runoff taxes (yes, Los Angeles taxes us for rainwater), ad infinitum. Us taxpayers are perpetually under attack and will die a death of a thousand taxes. Keep in mind that these are also the same people that can vote to give themselves raises. Try to do that that at your job.
In reality, it is glaringly apparent that we can’t afford ourselves anymore, so maybe it’s time to apply some basic economic principles to the government, like cutting a lot of unnecessary expenses, for example. But we will get convinced that this can’t be done because government math is obviously different than all other mathematics combined – including rocket science.
One last point here is who do you think those millions of city, county, state, and federal government workers are going to vote for; the politician talking about cutting the size, scope, expense, and power of government, or the politician championing government jobs and how they must be protected and even expanded? Unfortunately, it’s the latter, not the former. Obviously.
Don’t get me started on government employee labor unions and collective bargaining agreements where the taxpayer is virtually powerless. This, however, is simple math: They demand a raise and/or more benefits or threaten to go on strike, the politicians capitulate, and in the end, you’re going to pay more taxes.
If “Taxation without representation is tyranny,” how is representation with ever increasing taxation not outright theft/coercion? How about some representation with less taxation? Just asking questions.
Maybe the politicians should just be called Ultimate Meddlemen?
I was recently reflecting on how many jobs that I’ve had over the years and decided to write them all down for posterity, you know, in case anyone was wondering. Also, the electrical trade had its ups and downs and in between the slowdowns, I worked odd jobs. As you’ll see in 1979-1981, I jumped around quite a bit between a bunch of jobs because I was:
Between electrical jobs due to economic slowdowns.
Chasing better paying jobs
I simply got bored with them.
In 1978 I had moved in with my dad in Sacramento after getting released from Fire Camp #7 – Camp William V. Mendenhall, a juvenile detention facility in Lake Hughes, CA. Yes, I was a juvenile delinquent at one point in my life and I absolutely paid my dues for it. It’s a long story. I recently wrote a memoir about my juvenile delinquency and am currently seeking a literary agent – stay tuned. Anyway, after working in the kitchen at Mendenhall, I decided that the culinary arts was going to be my career path and that is how I ended up working as a prep cook in a Japanese restaurant.
1975-1976 – Gopher at Errol Sign Company, North Hollywood, CA. The summer of ‘75 was the first part-time job that I had. My best friend Mark Flaata got me the job, and the pay was a whopping $2.10 per hour – big bucks for a 14-year-old. With In-n-Out just down the street on Lankershim Blvd, this is where much of my money was spent. The owner Errol Biggs was a mustachioed character that drove around in a 1969 Chevy El Camino. He had dirt bikes that he let Mark and I borrow and eventually destroy.
1977 – Part-time machinist apprentice at Jack Drees Grinding, North Hollywood, CA for $3 per hour. Another job that Mark landed for me. Precision grinding for all sorts of military parts. Surface grinders, double-disk grinders, Blanchard grinders. I was pretty good at learning this and was running my own Blanchard grinder within a few months. Not bad for a 16-year-old.
1978 – Part-time prep cook at a Japanese restaurant in Sacramento, CA, $3.25 per hour. Among other duties like chopping, cutting, slicing, julienne, etc., all sorts of foods, this is where I learned how to break down and debone a whole chicken lickety-split.
1979 – Pumping gas at the Union 76 gas station at the corner of Whitsett Ave. and Vanowen Blvd., North Hollywood, CA, $3.50 per hour. My brother Scott got this job for me. For the Vietnam veteran owner George Christie, the gas station was a side hustle as he was a full-time engineer for the Southern Pacific Railroad. I quit after a few months.
1979 – Floyd Floor Mats, North Hollywood, CA, $3.75 per hour. This job consisted of cutting out carpet shapes and sewing on edges and silk-screening logos on floor mats. I didn’t particularly care for this filler job, and it lasted only a couple of months before I left for a better paying gig.
1979 – Part-time machinist apprentice at a machine shop on Hinds St., North Hollywood, CA, $4 per hour. I forgot the name of this company, but this is where I learned to run an analog Bridgeport milling machine. I left this job to go back to Drees grinding for more money.
1979 – Machinist at Jack Drees Grinding, North Hollywood, CA, working the swing shift as assistant foreman for $4.50 per hour at 18-years-old. Mark Flaata was working the same shift at Lockheed, so we would meet when our shifts were over and go off-roading and drink beer and smoke weed and listen to music, sometimes until sunrise.
1980 – Electrician – apprentice, G.G. Electric, North Hollywood, CA. $5 per hour! I got this job through my friend Jerry Podlevsky. I quickly learned the basics of reading blueprints, layout, and wiring. I was pretty good at this too and was a quick study.
1980 – European Motor Connection, North Hollywood, CA, $5 per hour. Low level mechanic and gopher for my brother-in-law, Armand Azran, a French Moroccan national. A shitty filler job. By 1993, Armand began engaging in criminal activity and had to leave the country before Guido and Tony caught up with him. He convinced my sister and mom to go, which was the dumbest thing for them to do. Armand eventually went to prison in Morocco.
1980 – Electrician – apprentice, Sheffield Electric, Reseda, CA, $6 per hour, through Jerry Podlevsky. This company had the notoriety of writing bad checks to its employees, so it was always a race to the bank on Friday.
1981 – Morris Richman Auto Sales, Studio City, CA, $5 per hour. Gopher, car washer, and porter. Another shitty filler job, but at least it was close to where I was living. This was the first time I took a reduction in my hourly wage.
1981-1984 – Electrician – apprentice to journeyman, J. J. Master Electric, Los Angeles, CA, $7 up to $12 per hour. Joe Masterson was the cigar chomping owner of this A-list electrical contractor. Landmark locations like Chasen’s and the Hotel Bel Aire plus various film, TV, radio and sports personalities and old L.A. money families like the Doheny’s and the Keck’s. Meeting and working with Vin Scully was a highlight.
1984-1990 – Electrician – journeyman, White Glove Electric, Santa Monica, CA, $13 up to $20 per hour. This company was started by Woody Miles and Rudy Martinez, two veteran electricians from J. J. Master who recruited me for more money. I left White Glove after a falling out with management. Promotional promises were made but not kept.
1990-1992 – Electrician – journeyman, Kamashian Electric, Van Nuys, CA, $21 up to $22 per hour. Joe Kamashian was great to work for and very professional. Lots of industrial control system work that I geeked out over, and I was really good at it There was a major slowdown and I got laid off.
1992-1994 – Electrician – journeyman, Shamma Electric, Granada Hills, CA, $22 up to $23 per hour. On December 26, 1994, I was electrocuted and almost killed on the job. It took me seven months to recover. This also set me up for a better career path 5-years later due to the California Vocational Rehabilitation law at the time. Long story.
1995-1998 – Electrician – journeyman, Kamashian Electric, Van Nuys, CA, $24 up to $26 per hour. It was good to work with Joe again. This was my last job working in the electrical trade.
1999 – obtained my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certification. This was a major career game changer.
1999-2005 – Systems Engineer for Center Automotive Group, Sherman Oaks, CA. The timing couldn’t be more perfect. The owner David Farguson had decided to update their dealer management system (DMS) from the green screen terminal-based mainframe Reynolds and Reynolds system at BMW, and ADP system at Chrysler/Jeep to a centralized Windows based system called Carman. I was moonlighting for them doing some electrical work on the BMW parts department remodel. They had a meeting where Mr. Farguson announced the decision to move to Carman and asked if anyone knew someone that knew Windows systems. My brother Scott was at that meeting, and he knew that I was taking the MCSE certification courses going to night school and floated my name out. David invited me to a meeting and offered me a salaried position starting at $80K. I was only making about $60K in the trade at the time. You bet your ass that I took the job. I happened to be at the right place at the right time and it changed my life.
2005 – Started my own IT consultancy, Business Technology Services & Management, LLC, Van Nuys, CA. Also certified on an IP based telephony system called Fonality. I had sold and installed a handful of these systems and got a call from the people that I knew at Fonality to help out one of their partners, Cbeyond Communications (a CLEC out of Atlanta), who was opening an office in Gardena, CA. The story was that Cbeyond had hired a cabling contractor to do a temporary cabling job on one of the floors of a building while another contractor was building out the suite a few floors above. The cabling contractor had disappeared, and Cbeyond was left in the lurch with plans to occupy the space within a week. I had been working with a cabling company named Streamline Communications which was owned by Sam Mazzola, one of my instructors for one of my MCSE certification courses. I got Sam and the Cbeyond team to together and Streamline delivered the project in five days! This set me up for something unexpected.
2007-2015 – Landed a major Field Services contract with Cbeyond Communications for the Los Angeles and San Diego markets. After helping Cbeyond with their cabling fiasco, their field services manager John Favors invited me to a meeting and asked if I was interested in doing field services for them as a preferred field services provider (FSP). Even though I was not fully prepared, I said yes because I knew I would figure it out as I went along. At the peak of the contract, I had ten employees in various positions working for my company. Total billing for this contract was $4.24 million over 8-years. After Birch Communications bought them out in 2014, they slowly bled out the FSP’s by bringing the field services in-house. I had to let go of everyone that was working for me.
2015-2018 – Field Nation platform for IT field services. Various tech related field service projects for hospitality, retail, food and beverage, and health care.
2018-2023 – Remote IT Systems and Network Consultant to TransformITive, Inc., Berkeley CA, $80k up to $90k.
2021 – Obtained my Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) certification. I had wanted to get this certification for years, and during COVID-19, I buckled down and did it. This certification is difficult – the global pass rate for the exam is under 50%, and the average pass rate is 2.5 attempts.
2023-present – Sr. Network Engineer consultant for a global retail network refresh project for a major shoe brand. Due to contractual restraints, I am not allowed to disclose the finances of this project. All I can say is that it pays well.
Twenty-four jobs in total – wowzah – I never tallied it up before! Setting the odd jobs aside, I mostly worked in two major but vastly different careers: the electrical trade (18-years) and in IT (25-years).
And now I am attempting to be a writer too, so maybe the count is three major careers?
At this precise moment, if you are reading this, you are a human being, and you are alive. You should celebrate this with every fiber of your being. Why? Because the odds of you being born are astronomically low – like 1 in 400 trillion – so you really need to consider yourself as more than extremely fortunate.
You are also on an ancient planet called Earth that is spinning at 1,000 miles per hour that is in a swirling galaxy named the Milky Way that is traveling through endless space at 1.3 million miles per hour. Is it not also wondrous that your body is made out of the same elements that are found in this galaxy? You are stardust.
By being alive, you have also found yourself on the ride of your life. There are many twists and turns and ups and downs on this ride that oftentimes leaves you feeling completely disoriented and out of control. This is actually good. Why? It is good because you feel something. You are alive.
This ride is both terrifying and exhilarating and will leave you breathless and bewildered and brokenhearted at times, but you can’t slow it down. In fact, it goes faster as you get older. Don’t fear it: hang on and embrace it. Enjoy it.
There is only one true way off of this ride and death will come soon enough, so don’t throw it away or rush it or force it or waste it or complain about it. Feel it. Fight for it. Live it. Feel the sunshine on your face. Watch a sunrise. Listen to the birds. Smell the flowers. Drink the wine. Eat the food. Immerse yourself in the wonder of it all. Love the living things. Love people. Love yourself. Amor fati.
In the summer of 1971, my dad took my younger brother Scott and I fishing on the shore of the Sacramento river…at night. I was 10 and Scott was 8. This, we were soon to find out, was going to be an unexpected adventure.
My dad loaded up our fishing gear and folding camp chairs and a metal Coleman cooler full of 12-ounce cans of Budweiser and Shasta cola then drove us to the “secret fishing spot” in his stock, white top with Glenwood Green body, 1964 Chevy C10 long-bed pickup. At first, we were driving along a 2-lane highway and then turned onto a narrow 2-lane county road that generally paralleled the curves of the great river to the farmland far beyond the city lights of Sacramento. Then he turned onto a rutty single lane dirt road and drove for a half-mile or so to a small, flat clearing amongst the oak trees that dotted the muddy banks of the ancient river.
There was a large bonfire, and there were about a half-dozen other men with pickups and a few more boys who happened to be running around the bonfire. So much for the secret fishing spot! My dad barely had the truck parked when Scott and I gleefully hopped out of the pickup and into the arms of the warm, firelit summer night.
We quickly introduced ourselves to the other boys and immediately engaged in the ongoing activities which basically consisted of running around the bonfire while throwing more wood into it…or anything else that we thought would burn.
Meanwhile, my dad met up with his buddies, and in the illumination of a Coleman lantern, they began to get themselves set up to fish for the largest fish in the Sacramento river – green sturgeon! They had thick fishing rods with large Penn reels and heavy line that they rigged up with big lead weights and huge fishing hooks. For bait, they impaled chicken leg or chicken thigh meat onto the fishhook and wrapped it up tight with panty hose. Yes, these men traveled around with panty hose in their tackle boxes. I’m sure their wives understood.
After rigging everything up, they cast out the lines with a back-and-forth swinging motion of the fishing rod to build up enough momentum to get the bait as close to the deep middle part of the river as they could, and after a big splash, the waiting game between man and fish began. Or was it a drinking game that began between man and man? They also smoked cigars and joked around quite a bit. Apparently, there was a lot of downtime fishing for sturgeon.
As my dad explained it to us, a sturgeon doesn’t strike like other freshwater fish. A bluegill, trout, or largemouth bass, for example, will take the bait and quickly swim off with it and this is easily detectable by the action on the fishing rod at which time you set the hook with a pulling action. A sturgeon, however, is pretty much a gigantic prehistoric suckerfish, and they will instead gently pull on the bait as they try to suck the chicken meat off of the hook. The only way to detect it is by “feeling” the fishing rod for successive tugs, and when you think you have one on the line, yank the rod back hard to set the hook. Hooking a sturgeon is one thing, but landing a sturgeon was described as, “reeling in a pickup truck.” We witnessed one of the men working for what seemed like an hour before he landed a massive sturgeon on the riverbank.
In the meantime, Scott, and I, on our Shasta cola caffeine and sugar high, were fishing our brains out for catfish with our light tackle setup using nightcrawler worms for bait. We caught tons of them and threw all of them back into the river after convincing ourselves that a bigger one was out there lurking, worthy of us to keep on fishing for “the big one.”
It was getting late, and Scott and I decided to take a break and go sit down on a log that was against a tree near the bank of the river. We sat down with a collective sigh. One moment later, the “log” violently convulsed, sending the two of us running off in full, screaming-boy panic mode. After a few seconds of sheer terror passed, we stopped to collect ourselves. We looked back and reasoned that since a log is not a living thing it is impossible for one to move like that, so it had to be something else. We slowly walked back to investigate. As we got closer, we could see more detail. Funny thing: in the dark, a sturgeon looks a lot like a log. Now that we positively identified what we were actually looking at, which was, in fact, not a log, we moved in for a closer look. It was a fascinating creature that looked as if it came from another time…or another planet! It convulsed again, and we jumped back in unison, this time laughing a little bit at ourselves. We found out it was a sturgeon that was caught earlier in the night.
That last thing I remembered about that night was that I crawled into the cab of the truck and fell asleep. But my dad, who got skunked fishing, brought home a dozen or so thick sturgeon steaks that were given to him by one of his fishing buddies.
At home, my dad previously converted an old Kenmore refrigerator into a cold smoker that sat outside on the patio. He cold smoked all of those lovely sturgeon steaks into absolute smoked fish nirvana! I think he thought that he was going to have smoked fish for weeks to enjoy with his ice-cold Bud, but it was not meant to be…because us kids found his stash in the garage refrigerator, and we wiped it out in a matter of days!
5. White lie. A harmless or trivial lie, like, “The dog ate my homework,” or, “No, I didn’t eat all of the cookies.”
4. Bald-faced lie. A lie that is told obvious, shameless, and without any attempt to conceal the deception. For example, “No, officer – this is not my dime bag of weed,” while holding said dime bag of weed.
3. Big fat lie. Generally reserved for couples. “No, I didn’t go out with the guys last night: I was at a PTA meeting.”
2. Lying to yourself. There’s too much to unpack here, but I’m pretty sure you can come up with a couple.
1. Government lies. Next level professional lying that can do more damage than all of the other lies combined.
Depending upon the context, the politicians that perpetrate these lies will either look dead serious or smile for the news camera as they tell them. Also, many politicians started out as lawyers, so there’s that.
The list of government lies is far too long for this post, so I’ll highlight a few recent ones:
Donald Trump – Blaming Ukraine for starting the war on Ukraine. Source, CNN.
Joseph Robinette Biden II – On promising not to pardon his son, Hunter. Source, BBC.
Barack Obama – Falsely Claiming that Obamacare Was “Absolutely Not A Tax Increase.” Source, ABC News.
Before talking to the press, maybe the politicians need to be hooked up to a modified polygraph machine that shocks them when they tell a lie? Nah, that’s a terrible, stupid, inhumane idea – they would all electrocute themselves in public!
On the other hand, it would be top notch entertainment.
msnarky 